‘Captain America 2′ Breaks April Box Office Records [Updated]

Before Captain America: The Winter Soldier even hit theaters it was confirmed that directors (and brothers) Anthony and Joe Russo would be helping plan out the story for Captain America 3 and again directing. It was a display of confidence from Marvel Studios and its key decision-maker Kevin Feige, but an unsurpising one considering the critical response to the film.

Early reviews of Captain America 2 labeled it one of the studio’s best and now that it’s out, it’s certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with numbers comparable to Iron Man and The Avengers, Marvel’s two strongest scored films to date. And like fellow Marvel sequel Thor: The Dark World, the second Captain America film is serving as a test for the studio, releasing in theaters outside of the traditional key summer blockbuster dates. And it’s working.

Thor 2 opened in November, and thanks to the boost of brand recognition from The Avengers, hit $85.7 million domestically on opening weekend. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, already having broke advanced ticket sales records for the month of April, is on track to potentially beat that number – an interesting switch since the original Thor outsold Captain America: The First Avenger two years ago (both opened summer 2011).

Captain America: The Winter Soldier Mondo Poster by Rich Kelly

On Thursday, the day before opening wide in North America, 82% of all ticket pre-sales on Fandango were for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and the numbers beat out any other April release in the company’s 14-year history. According to BoxOffice.com, the opening weekend forecast for Cap 2 is around $94 million, with some estimates putting it near $100 million. The current record-holder for April openings is Fast Five which earned $86.2 million in the final April weekend of 2011 (on week before the summer movie season officially begins).

While the weekend isn’t quite over yet, we do have some numbers for comparison. Studio estimates have The Winter Soldier earning $10.2 million on its early Thursday evening screenings, beating last year’s Man of Steel ($9 million) and Thor 2 ($8.8 million). It doesn’t quite come close to the big summer mega hits Iron Man 3 ($15.6 million) and The Avengers ($18.7 million) though.

On Friday, the film broke an April box office record, bringing in $37 million from 3,938 theater screens across North America, approximately 80% of them in 3D. By comparison, previous record holder Fast Five earned $34.4 million in its top single-day. With over $100 million already made overseas where the film opened first, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is expected to have earned $270 million worldwide by the end of the weekend. Marvel has another big hit on their hands.

It’s no surprise then that Captain America 3 will begin shooting next year for an expected May 2016 release, where it’s currently sharing a weekend with big competitor Batman vs. Superman from DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. One of the films is expected to move and while Marvel Studios president of production Kevin Feige went on record starting that Marvel Studios has no plans to change dates, the April success of Captain America 2 could mean its followup sees its date pushed up to a similar weekend in 2016.

Variant Poster

We spoke with Feige at the Captain America: The Winter Soldier junket a few weeks ago where we asked about the non-summer release dates of Marvel’s Phase 2 films (Thor 2 in November, Cap 2 in April, and Guardians of the Galaxy in August) and he explained that they’re seeing if their theory of releasing good movies is more important than the date itself.

“Well, there are two things: one, Sony had a Spider-Man movie on that first weekend in May, and we also want to try to expand that summer season, frankly. There are so many movies every weekend, and we started to look at other films that had done extremely well in March, extremely well in April, and really of the belief that if you put out a good movie, a good product, you can put it out any time of the year. We will test that in three weeks.”

Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Thor: The Dark World prove that Marvel Studios can succeed with releasing a pair of summer films and releasing them in the spring and fall. Is it a sign of things to come?

Like the posters above? The prints are by artist Rich Kelly and became available April 4th (day of film’s release) at MondoTees.com and sold out in less than a day!

[Update: The total weekend estimate has Captain America: The Winter Soldier earning $96.2 million in its domestic opening with its worldwide total already at $303.3 million. It’s the largest April opening of all-time.]

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is now in theaters, Guardians of the Galaxy opens August 1, 2014, The Avengers: Age of Ultron on May 1, 2015, Ant-Man on July 17, 2015, and unannounced films for May 6 2016, July 8 2016 and May 5 2017.

102 Comments

Post a Comment

Want to change your avatar?Go to Gravatar.com and upload your own (we'll wait)!

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Rules: No profanity or personal attacks. Use a valid email address or risk being banned from commenting.

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

If your comment doesn't show up immediately, it may have been flagged for moderation. Please try refreshing the page first, then drop us a note and we'll retrieve it. Keep in mind that we do not allow external links in the comments.

Joker 11 months ago

Warner bros move the release date for batman vs superman NOW move it to a sooner date if possible.

My comment was a joke but i really don’t think WB will change the release or delay the movie i actually think it will be Captain america 3 that changes.If they both release on the same day both won’t reach their full potential its a matter of who has more to lose.BvS will sell no matter what the name itself will sell the movie its batman and superman together what else do you need Captain America on the other hand needs an Amazing Story to sell.Captain america isn’t that iconic as batman and superman are around the world.As the Winter Soldier shows Cap can break the box office thats why i don’t think marvel will take the risk of losing all that possible cash because they made the mistake of putting it against BvS.

On the other hand Marvel can take a hit and lose some money on CA3 and because it will be the end to a trilogy they don’t need to bother how it will hurt future films (unless they intend to lunch some kind of a new hero in that movie).

BvS is a lunching pad to all future DC movies espacially wonder woman so they need to get to many people as they can. If this movie can’t get to Billion dollars mark (for all the reasons you said above) then it a huge stick in the wheels for any future dc film and the entire universe.

I doubt Captain America 3 will move as it needs to remain fairly close to that date in order to stick with the phase 2 scheduling – bearing in mind we’ll probably have Agents Of Shield getting a second season (Despite fan complaints it is still rather popular ratings wise)

The thing is – its likely Captain America 3 will be the last in the series – with Captain America only returning for Avengers 3 before being replaced by Bucky in a similar way to the comics. With that being said, Marvel don’t really want to have a Justice League film as competition against Avengers 3 for example – so easiest way to stop DC would be to keep the date.

Captain America 3 would earn around 800-1bn while Batman Vs Superman would earn about the same – however Marvel would be the winners as without a massively successful DC film then DC would be forced to rethink their planned Justice League film.

I mean the situation at the moment is that if Batman Vs Superman is popular then we can practically expect a Justice league by around 2018/2019 which would clash with Avengers 3. Marvel knows they cant budge any Avengers movies because of DC – so instead they’ll pit a fairly popular character whose film series is ending against Batman Vs Superman.

This means Marvel has just showed other studios, that even non Summer release date (April, November) can still work, as along as they have a great movie. To be frank, that’s quite a daring and brave act, so thumbs up for Feige and the gang for making this decision.

I think Cap 3 (if its indeed happening on May 2016) might be moved by Marvel to open earlier, or WB will see this opportunity instead to open that Man of Steel sequel to April (considering they will have done production way earlier). I think the latter is going to happen while Marvel will then take WB’s usual July spot (as they already did for 2015 haha).

Going to watch Winter Soldier again tomorrow with my cousin, just to get a more comprehensive look to the stuff I definitely missed (Avengers Tower!) on my first viewing. Of course already saving my money to get the home-video as well hahaha. Can’t wait!

Oh, and one more thing. Even when people seemed to be divisive about Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World, let’s be honest… Marvel had done a really amazing work with Phase 2 so far. Not only they were significantly darker (deaths everywhere) yet still truer to the comics, but Tony Stark blew away his suits, Thor left Asgard while Loki became King, and now Cap did what he did (no spoiler). These are big gamechanger things affecting and shaking up their Cinematic Universe while continue building it forward. You got to hand it to them, THAT is something awesome and brave steps done by the studio!

Not sure how this movie alone can show that April releases can do well.

I mean, Iron Man 2 and Evil Dead had success as April releases.

The Avengers did phenomenally as an April release.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will also do well when it releases on April 18th (and right now, I’d like to request that someone high up in the SR echelons puts the same spoiler warning on the site that you did for Cap 2 since Spider-Man comes out in the UK 2 weeks before US release and I’d hate for anyone to ruin the movie for others).

Yeah but I listed UK release dates because Avengers released in May over in the US too.

I honestly don’t care what a movie made in the US or if it means a month is good for movies in the US only because films are a global thing that unite people of all nations, why limit focus on just one country?

This film has restored my faith in Marvel. I enjoyed Avengers but thought Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 were weak. Although not a Marvel property, Man of Steel was absolutely terrible, so I haven’t seen a good comic book movie since Avengers. Sure, the other films made a lot of money, but after seeing them, I am not interested in seeing them again. This movie has me thinking about it over and over. Well done!

I don’t understand this whole ‘It will be brought to May where it will compete with Man of Steel’ thing….??? How are they competing? Arm wrestle? Game of Chess? Can’t be box office numbers since the date would make no difference. If people like superman they will go see superman, if they like captain america, they will watch captain america.. if they like both, they will watch both.. It doesn’t matter what time of the year they are shown!

What’s interesting is that I think Cap 2 is already on track to beat Man of Steel with an opening like that, at least domestically. And out of all of the Phase 2 movies, I thought the Marvel humor was used the most tastefully in this one, as well as being successful at making the movie adult and having mature thematic discussions without hitting you over the head (JESUS IMAGERY COUGH COUGH MAN OF STEEL COUGH) and still keeping the characters innate goodness and desire to help others intact. Cap has conflicts within himself in this movie, but there’s no doubt he is a hero at any point.

I saw some of the same general audience members from Monday’s Cap 2 screening at Friday’s Noah screening. You’re giving way too little credit to “the generals” there.

While they will go to see the movie that looks the best according to the TV spots that release the week before, they’ll see the other one the following week if they like the look of it. That’s generally how it works.

Cap 2 released here on the 26th but there were ZERO 3D screenings for it.

Noah released a few days ago and again, only 2D screenings. Can’t guarantee if every cinema worldwide will have several different ways of watching because I assumed the IMAX cinema I normally go to would screen both movies in all three formats (2D, 3D and IMAX 3D) but I was completely wrong when I actually got to the lobby and double checked showtimes on the screen behind the ticket counter.

The only August comic book movie releases I recall are the two Kick-Ass movies. Otherwise, Dredd was out in early September, Cap 1 and Thor 2 were October, Iron Man 1 in May, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Cap 2 and The Avengers in April, The Dark Knight in June and The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and The Dark Knight Rises in July.

love marvel but dont fly the handle yet, captain america and this cast not good enough to
take on batman vs superman head to head. feige is being arrogant if they dont move the date
back. cap comic wise is my favorite hero but this movie did have its flaws even though i gave it a
B-.
1. ALEXANDER PIERCE should have been the red skull.
2. still no unique costumes with masks for batroc the leaper and no skull mask
appearance by the anticipated crossbones.
3. the falcon’s character and costume was too vanilla.
4. disbanding shield completely when new threats continue to arise was ridiculous.
5. samuel jackson’s contract needs to expire because iam sick of him being the
spokesman for every marvel announcement he makes, glad this was the shield movie
marvel talked about years ago because nick fury does not need a standalone film.
6. and really which boneheaded heroes would divulge all of shields secrets to threaten
world security by probably helping to create more terrorists.
7. finally again fury played to the heroes emotions to get the job done, LOL.

Rod22 you’re CRAZY to think that this cast can’t go head to head with Man of Steel. Captain America Winter Soldier is the BEST phase 2 movie and was WAY better than Man of Steel. Chris Evans as Captain is amazing and Falcon was a great side kick for Captain and a great friend. I bet that Captain America 3 will beat Man of Steel 2 in the box office.

dont smoke that pipe so much, cap is neither going to touch neither
the darknights numbers nor dark rises and MOS numbers opening numbers.
thats an average of 144.6 per the last two batman and one superman film.
just look at the lego movie doing 250 million dollars with a lego dc characters.
cap 2 was good but marvel will move film eventually, GUARANTEED.

rod22, you realize that the Batman in man of steel 2 wont be Christian Bale’s Batman? I also think your idea that The LEGO Movie only made that money because of a DC comic character as the reason it did so well is ridiculous. The LEGO movie did well because it has LEGO. they could have swapped out Batman for Spiderman or some other Marvel character and it would have been different but still done as good as it did because it is LEGO.

did you know that LEGO is the number 2 toy company, IN THE WORLD? LEGO made the LEGO movie great. Not Batman.

LEGO.

Back to your thinking that Cap can’t beat Batman’s numbers. It doenst matter what the numbers are. It matters that this movie was a way better movie than all 3 Batman movies of the Nolan series. Batman Begins was a great movie but showed signs of budget problems. There were scenes that looked like the money ran out. The Dark Knight had ending problems. The Dark Knight Rises had starting and ending problems and the main character wasn’t even Batman. There was so little Batman in TDKR that I started wanting Robin to show up just to fill the good guy void that was present.

Marvel knows how to handle their IPs and they are going snow DC and WB under before DC/WB can even get their movie universe off the ground.

I think you yourself are flying off the handles here. I love this movie because not only did it remain faithful to the comic mythos (HYDRA infiltrating SHIELD over the years then breaking it up actually happened for one), but the directors did a TREMENDOUS job combining it with the modern world; plus it sets up different directions the Captain America movies (and the MCU as a whole) can take from here.
Sam Wilson’s character (Falcon) is pretty much any soldier coming back from war, struggling to recover/retain their humanity; he is relatable.
As much as I wanna see Man of Steel 2 too, I think Snyder’s in over his head here cramming too much for a reboot’s sequel, doing a crossover movie which leads to separate standalones (reverse-MCU).
This movie is very, very well made.

I definitely agree about Falcon being real generic… They got a flying back pack at Ft Meade!? Let’s get it? Batroc is just silly. You really want that silly mask in the movie? At least they got his colors right on his shirt, that was good enough. Anyway 100000 times better than that first POS they call Cap First Avenger… They just screwed that all to hell… So all around great Shiel…uhmmm Cap movie…

Yea, I think you’re nuts on the cast comment as well. You must really love Ben.

The movie, at least to me, was done more realistically because Cap is a super human, not a God like Thor or a beast like Hulk. And the movie does this so well, especially with the fight scenes. So costumes aside I think it was a good choice. Falcon’s is being introduced so he had a limited background storytelling. And his suit is vanilla because it is the SAME suit developed years ago. It’s not even a suit, it’s a jet pack I’m sure Ironman will have a field day with a new one soon so don’t worry.

Shield is in Chaos. We don’t know what is going to happen. The council is still there, Fury and a few trusted agents are still there. There are still many secrets and threats within Shield. It’s crazy to think otherwise. Plus, the team is still there

I don’t know how you being sick of seeing Nick or Samuel Jackson has anything to do with the movie other than you don’t like him. I’m confused on how properly address this so I won’t.

Leaking the info onto the internet serves several important purposes. I’ll just address one so we don’t get you too confused. Since no one can be trusted, it was in their best interest to dump the info as QUICKLY as possible to avoid any further catastrophes. Plus, even with the data dumped the movie clearly showed the audience there are a lot more secrets that wasn’t there. You didn’t walk out on the movie and missed the ending(s) did you? Well…you should really go watch it again so you understand why some things are like that.

What?! I thought everyone likes America now that we have a guy in office who apologizes to everybody, bows down to everybody, is hesitant to assign blame (to anyone (accept those who criticize him), and takes from those “evil” rich people and gives to those who, er, vote for him…

Oh, that’s right, he has also taken spying on people to a whole ‘notha level.

Cap 2 has been out for almost 2 weeks outside the US and last I checked, made $47million internationally (several countries combined) while in the 2 days since US release, it’s made $38million in just that one country.

Dredd and Pacific Rim were seen as flops in the US but hit the number 1 spot in several international territories so again, can’t take success or failure in America as the be all and end all, which unfortunately, people seem to assume, especially on movie websites.

Cap 2 was a great movie and the best Marvel film so far but still, lets not start getting ahead of ourselves here just because the numbers are coming in for the US. This also means we shouldn’t make assumptions regarding 2016 either because people are acting goofy already and taking sides without knowing anything about the two movies going head to head.

Well, as of today (04-06-14), Box Office Mojo reports that Cap. 2 has made 96 million in the US and 207 million internationally, for a total of over 300 million in its first weekend in wide release. By comparison, Dredd made only $35 million TOTAL and Pacific Rim made $411 million TOTAL during their entire runs.

Ah, I don’t think anyone is getting “ahead of themselves” here about the success of Cap 2.

How oh how am I gonna keep from rushing out to the theater to see this, when I know I am going to be first in line to buy the DVD when available?! (I usually don’t go to the theater to save money for films I know I am going to purchase anyways…saves money–but this one is pretty tempting!)

Green Lantern #2 could do this box-office blastoff blitzkreig thing also (well, almost), IF they would make it right. Especially if they did Hal Jordan Green Lantern and Barry Allen Flash versus Sinestro and Professor Zoom (the Reverse-Flash)…and especially totally if they stacked the deck against the good guys by adding Time Commander as an additional baddie. And especially totally completely if they decided the deck with three baddies against two goodies was too stacked, and so gave the goodies Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson) to even things out! (I could keep on going on like this all day!!).

Excellent film,
The chase scene with Jackson was great,Redford elevated the film I thought.Still prefer Ironman 1 and The Avengers but its third in my Marvel list.Got to hand it to Feige. Spiderman next.

I said this on the facebook post for this article and I’ll say it here as well.
In all honesty, at least for me personally, i only saw movies in summer and winter because that’s where all the “worth while” movies were. I can care less what time of the year it is, if it’s a good movie or apeals to me, then i will go see it.

Frankly, I’m all for them taking their time and doing it right. If the movie gets the same criticism that MOS did, and if it does not meet financial expectations (probably hoping for a billion, even though MOS didn’t get close), then Warners will have to go back to the drawing board and likely reboot, yet again.

Agreed 100%. The poor casting choices they have made for SvB have already likely affected the end product, or at least its final profit. I know that, as a result of our disappointment in the casting, my friends and I are already more likely to just wait for the DVD release rather than see it in the theater. I have no doubt that others are thinking the same.

Say what you want about Marvel’s humor, but at least…at least…they get the casting right!

Marvel does a great job with their movies overall. But we know there were glaring issues with the first phase 2 movies in Iron Man 3 (Trevor) and Thor 2 (uninspired and kind of a filler movie). Cap 2 got it completely right. It Tied into the overall Avengers arc, no disgrace to popular characters, great action, just the right amount of humour, superb writing, great nods to future characters: I’m going to see it again today.

The Mandarin thing isn’t really an issue for me because we’ve yet to actually meet the Mandarin. We met AIM and their leader using the persona to place blame for terror attacks but that had nothing to do with The Ten Rings and their leader in hiding.

People are reactive and impatient. I’m betting that by the time Phase 3 is over, and you take all the movies into account, it’ll all make a lot more sense to everyone and Feige, Marvel & Co. will be hailed as the geniuses they are.

I saw Cap with my wife last night, and ‘Damn, Captain America can do no wrong!’. I really enjoy his films compared to Thor’s, Nick J. Fury’s SUV is now my ‘Dream Vehicle.’. I love the wise ass comments, and “to your left” is catchy as hell. Falcon and Black Widow we’re great also, and Legendary Actor Redford “WOW!”. Marvel, I hope you keep your movies with this kind of quality in the future. Now GOTG is the next film I’m looking forward to. ” Star-Lord who?”. “I’m Star-Lord, man.”

Its clear DC is going for a team approach. Justice league has always been the main focus, every character toy is branded with it. I bet WB will only do one solo film per characterand allow mostly team ups for there films. Its a gdeat approach if true imo, cause its diffrent and some of the best dynamics of the character is how tjey interact with each other.

Pah. I’m done with Fox based films for the most part (The Amazing Spiderman was boring and unimpressive. And the new Fantastic Four production is dead to me). The producers and directors over there seem to have zero respect for the source material, or basic continuity in general.

The X-men while I have affection for them, are on their last leg with me (I’ll give Singer a chance to right the wrongs done in his absence), but I have severe doubts one film can fix all the continuity errors without it being a simple minded fix, that is to say, I require something a bit more substantial than a line of dialogue to explain away the massive continuity errors in the series….

I hope I’m wrong, I hope the word of mouth draws me in, but I’m not counting on it.
(Again, Fantastic Four: NOT A PRAYER. Micheal B Jordan threw the gauntlet down with his “They’ll see it anyway” comment. Challenge accepted bub >:/

Ya…show micheal b jordan…
In fact..i’m sure he’ll see this comment..and realize the error of his ways.

As an actor, if he’s offered a role in a major movie, a chance to put his take on something iconic…he shd have jst said no..

There is only one version of fantastic four in the comics.
There is no ultimate marvel..where mr.fantastic is a villain (for how long..is debatable…). Or Marvel Zombies…Or MC2 ..Or Age of Apocalypse…Or a ton of reeds in Council of Reeds. None of that exists. There is only one take on the fantastic four possible. The “source” writers don’t change that ever…. just the movie people.

And a black human torch….That changes Johnny Storm’s character completely. Now..he will have different colored flames…(I’m sorry..can’t even be properly sarcastic at this point… How does making Johnny Storm black change anything remotely important to his character..? Can’t he have been adopted..is that not fairly damn common now..?)

Seriously, calm down!! I can’t wait to see this movie, I actually thought the 1st Capt America movie was the most complete Marvel movie to date, but I can’t stand the anti-DC comments that come out when a Marvel movie does well. What does one have to do with the other?

Looking at all those Easter eggs in cap2 wel one thing is clear that MARVEL’s gona expand their universe bt we want the big guns to come in (Spider-Man,wolverine etc)…and marvel should plan to get them in when they can…

Saw Cap last night, was really enjoyable, my only gripe is with the Falcon, there was no depth to his character, really hated that. But OMG the winter soldier, loved, loved him. Bravo to Marvel, excellent.
“to your left” will become iconic, i guarantee it!
DC will really have to pic up their game.

Yea, Falcon had limited story behind him but so did Black Widow. All them secrets with those two and the look on Cap’s face. Come on, you had to have noticed that right? It’s the secrecy behind those two, especially with Back Widow. I’m wouldn’t be surprise if she got her own movie based on how the ending went. As for Falcon, hahaha, we all know where he is going with; and since neither of them can..umm…make another falcon pack, “someone” will have to made an improvement